State of the Salmon

The Goals and Principles of Salmon Conservation


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Photo courtesy of WSC staff

State of the Salmon created an evolving "Goals and Principles for Salmon Conservation" as a living guidance document to help define the stewardship requirements for thriving wild salmon.

We are at a point where depleted populations could be lost forever, and the best wild salmon ecosystems could face unprecedented threats. While the exact approach to successful management may vary in locations around the Pacific Rim, the outcomes should not. These goals and principles point the way to a set of conservation measures and consistent performance benchmarks that guides conservation of wild salmon across their entire range.

In order to build essential performance metrics that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of fisheries management approaches and actions, State of the Salmon will refine and elaborate on these goals and principles as they are informed by new fishery and conservation science.

We invite your participation. Please send your review and comments by here.

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Draft Principles

View the current bibliography for the principles.

Goal One: Manage wild salmon populations for abundance, diversity, and the maintenance of ecosystem health.

To guarantee their future livelihoods and the future health of Pacific salmon, the following Principles are necessary to meet this fish management Goal:

  1. Designate conservation units that have biological relevance and set associated management objectives in an open and transparent process.
  2. Monitor salmon at this unit scale to set meaningful biological and ecological escapement goals.
  3. Periodically assess population status by species.
  4. Maintain a protocol that articulates a suite of effective management responses to resolve chronic under-escapement.
  5. Manage harvest conservatively, recognizing uncertainty associated with population identification, population status and contributions from enhanced stocks in mixed stock fisheries; shift to terminal fisheries.
  6. Buffer wild salmon from the effects of artificially cultured salmon using spatial and temporal approaches, including hatchery/farm-free zones as well as requiring best management practices.
  7. Account for the impact of hatchery fish on wild salmon and on marine rearing grounds.
  8. Establish information systems to collect reliable, consistent biological data from the field for use in management decisions.
  9. Institutionalize performance review mechanisms allowing agencies to evaluate management effectiveness and respond adaptively to challenges.

Goal Two: Protect and restore enough habitat to maintain healthy wild salmon stocks and ecosystem processes.

The following principles are necessary to meet the goal of ensuring that sufficient habitat is available to provide for wild salmon:

  1. Identify and prioritize the most important strongholds of wild salmon within each salmon ecoregion of the North Pacific.
  2. Support and maintain ecosystem functions within the natural range of variation.
  3. Protect the areas most likely to provide critical spawning and rearing habitat for salmon in each stream.
  4. Ensure the health of the natural ecological processes that deliver water, wood, nutrients and sediment to streams, supporting aquatic habitat.
  5. Develop a series of marine “no-go” zones (marine protected areas or time-area closures) for harvest or other industrial uses to protect high-value juvenile rearing and migration areas at sea.
  6. Require natural resource extraction to operate using best management practices to minimize long-term alteration of basin biota, topography and stream flows.

Goal Three: Build institutions, markets, and human communities that support wild salmon and their ecosystems over time.

The following Principles are necessary to meet this stewardship goal:

  1. Ensure that land management and tribal agencies have sufficient information, staff and budgetary resources to achieve the Principles.
  2. Ensure that local and regional non-governmental organizations have the authority and capacity to serve as long-term stewards and watchdogs for the protection of salmon and their habitat.
  3. Task agencies or organizations with the responsibility for conducting periodic review to determine what progress is being made toward achieving the Principles.
  4. Promote wild salmon markets that generate economic incentives for salmon and habitat protection.
  5. Support programs that engage communities in learning about salmon ecosystems.
  6. Create public awareness of the value of salmon river ecosystems and the essential role of communities that fish for them and live alongside them.

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